The present invention relates generally to wireless communication devices, and particularly to wireless communication devices, such as cellular telephones, capable of accessing the Internet.
Many consumer electronic devices, such as Personal Computers (PCs) and wireless communication devices, include a browser application for allowing a user to access web pages via the Internet. Typically, browser applications present the user with a Graphical User Interface (GUI) to facilitate interaction with the web page. However, not all browsers present the GUI in the same way. The GUI for a browser executing on a PC, for example, usually has a dedicated field for receiving a string representing a Uniform Resource Locator (URL), and another, separate field for receiving strings representing search terms and keywords. However, because of the size of the display and/or other constraints, browser applications executing on many wireless communication devices, such as cellular telephones for example, provide only a single input field for receiving both a URL and a search string. To determine whether the user enters a URL or a search term into the input field, the browser application analyzes the syntax of the input string. If the input string represents a URL, the browser application resolves the URL and downloads the corresponding web page for display. If the input string is a search term, the browser application generates a search query including the search term, and sends the query to a predefined search service provider such as GOOGLE or MSN or BING, for example.
In many cases, browser applications will provide the user with a list of suggestions to assist a user in locating a desired web page or other information source. The suggestions are usually based on the alpha-numeric characters input by a user, and may be refined as the user enters new characters into the input field. The source of data for generating the suggestions on the list can be information stored on the user's device. Conventionally, these sources include a predictive text input database, a list of previously visited URLs, and bookmarks stored in memory. The source for generating the list may also be provided by an application executing on an external server. One such example is a suggestion service like GOOGLE SUGGEST. With such suggestion mechanisms, a user is able to locate a desired information source relatively quickly and with a limited number of key presses. Therefore, the user receives a highly optimized experience.